Preamble
Dear legislator,
“Let there become of you a nation that shall call for righteousness, enjoin justice and forbid evil. Such men shall surely triumph”. Q. 3: 104.
Let me start this letter with a congratulatory message and a prayer. I congratulate you for becoming our ‘Honourable’ lawmakers an organ that is most crucial in a democracy. With your legislative role the destiny of Nigeria will be determined or reshaped. But more importantly, I pray the Almighty God to grant you listening ears and tamed minds against greed and avarice that became the undoing of your predecessors. Amen.
Just as it happened to the session before yours, this letter is coming to you both as a counsel and an admonition. What qualifies yours sincerely to write this letter to you is that the column called ‘The Message’ is a stake holder in the great project called Nigeria. This country is like a ship in which we are all voyaging together through a storming ocean. And we must all be vigilant enough to ensure that it does not hit the rock.
A similar letter was twice written in this column to the legislators of the 8th and 9th National Assembly. The first was in 2015 barely nine months after some of them resumed in their respective legislative houses. The second was a reminder in 2019. But like a dog destined to end up in perdition would refuse to hear the hunter’s cautioning whistle, your predecessors refused to heed the admonition contained in those letters. You all know the consequence of their refusal today.
Role of conscience
“Conscience”, according to Sheikh Uthman Dan Fodio, “is an open wound which only the truth can heal”. But one can talk of healing a wounded conscience only where it has not become cancerous. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) told us in one Hadith that hypocrites are known by three signs: “When they talk they lie; when they promise they renege and when they are trusted they betray”. Most of your predecessors so much typify that Hadith that it seems as if the Prophet had Nigerian legislators in mind when he expressed that axiom. I hope you will learn a lesson from their case.
You will recall that when you started nursing the ambition to become legislators, whether at the federal or state level, or even as chairmen or councillors in local governments, your first announcement was that you wanted ‘to serve your people’. Based on that announcement, people rallied round you and embraced you as their representatives.
That announcement was your first political covenant. It was not between you and the people in your constituencies alone. Since it entailed your promise and the trust of the people, Allah’s hand was in it and He will surely hold you accountable for it because you made such promise voluntarily. It does not matter whether you were genuinely elected or rigged into office as usual.
Deception
Your original intension for making the announcement will be weighed against your action on getting to office. And you will be judged accordingly when you leave the office. That is quite different from a possible rigging that fetched you the status of a legislators as well as the title of ‘Honourable’.
In the process, some of you deprived your fellow politicians of those positions which rightfully belonged to them. Just as you will call on God for justice if you were in their shoes so they will take your case to God’s court. And the prayer of a cheated person, according to Prophet Muhammad (SAW), never suffers divine denial.
You must remember that it is only God’s judgment that can neither be manipulated nor appealed. And no matter how long it may take, Allah’s judgment will be executed perhaps when you least expect. On that, you are left to your consciences if you have any.
In Islam, two issues are exceptionally fundamental which Allah does not treat lightly. These are sacredness of life and justice. It is a great iniquity for any human being to engage in murder and injustice under any guise. Thus, anybody who kills fellow human beings extra-judicially in the name of religion is nothing but a pagan. In Islam, killing of a fellow human being deliberately is such a grievous sacrilege that cannot and should not occur without commensurate punishment.
Besides paganism, nothing draws the wrath of Allah as fast as these two crimes which Satan may continue to ask you to ignore at your own peril.
Murder is physical termination of the life of a fellow human being. Injustice is to kill a person mentally, psychologically and spiritually by denying him his or her right.
In Islam, rule of law is the foundation of justice but legislation is the material with which that foundation is built. Those who voluntarily chose to legislate for others must see themselves as the foundation layers of justice who should not, advertently or inadvertently, betray the course of justice. Can this be said of you?
Where is your Honour?
Honourable legislators, you are addressed as honourable today neither because you are more dignified and more intellectually qualified than those for whom you are legislating nor because you are wiser and more experienced than them. What makes most of you legislators is sheer expediency arising from queer inadequacies sadly fostered by our so-called political system which has not been perfected against gerrymandering.
Read Also: 2023 as referendum on some governors Legislators
If such opportunity comes your way illegally, let it not be mistaken for good luck. It may rather be a calamity waiting to strike in future. And when it strikes, no one except Allah can tell the extent of its effect.
At least you can see how the consequences of the heartless annulment of June 12, 1993 Presidential election have become a draconian spectre chasing the ghost of Nigeria even after two decades of licking the wound.
The covenant you made with the people is to serve them. And those who choose to serve are nothing but servants. But no sooner had your predecessors been sworn into office than they started calling themselves leaders. That is why most of them found it difficult to bend a little backwards and report back to their constituencies. Today, where are they? And their constituencies remain intact albeit backward.
Surrogate spouses
Since most of your predecessors resumed in Abuja or their state capitals without their spouses, the first thing they did after settling down was to search for alternative but illegitimate sexual partners who acted as their surrogate spouses. And the cost was borne by the same betrayed electorate. Not only that, they also began their primary duty of legislating by first fixing their own salaries and allowances against all norms of morality and at the expense of those who made it possible for them to become legislators.
You turned the privilege of legislating into a right and used it to intimidate the poor masses and ride roughshod over them. When they occasionally pretend to interact with those masses it was for the purpose of preparing their minds for the next election in which they hoped to be returned to Parliament where sharing money was the priority.
Some of them spent about eight years in those legislative houses without any sign in their immediate constituencies that anybody was representing the people of those constituencies. It is hoped that your session in this era of ‘CHANGE’ will show a remarkable difference.
Self Aggrandisement
When your predecessors travelled abroad officially, with people’s money, they were never alarmed by the way political and economic systems worked in those countries. Rather, their primary concern was the latest cars plying the roads of those countries and the most magnificent mansions that they could copy back home to match new status as legislators. That is why virtually every political office holder in Nigeria between 1999 and now was either riding or eager to ride the newest vehicle from Europe, America or Asia even as they owned Nigeria’s choicest estates. In a nutshell, politics to them was a short term business that must bring profit by all means.
Thus, at their instance, Nigeria was held to a standstill as they doctored the annual budget presented to them by the executive arm in order to share the national cake with the Executives in the spirit of ‘rub my back I rub yours’.
Most of them were fathers and mothers who would want their children to grow up as responsible men and women, yet, refused to serve as good examples for those children. How could Nigeria be good?
Reminder
As new legislators, perhaps it is necessary to remind you that everything in this world is based on condition. The world itself did not come into existence without condition. Man was originally created and appointed as Allah’s vicegerent on earth on condition that he would serve Allah. And all other living or unliving things were divinely ordered to obey and serve man on condition that he (man) would also obey and serve Allah. That service was not an imposition. It was voluntary.
Before putting man in charge of the world at all, Allah had consulted far and wide with all the stake holders concerned. Each of them declined responsibility except man who, out of greed and arrogance, volunteered to take charge and be responsible for it.
Allah states this clearly in Q. 33 V. 72 thus: “We offered the ‘TRUST’ (of the world) to the heavens; to the earth and to the mountains; but they refused to bear it and were afraid of it. Man, who undertook to bear it, has proved to be unjust, foolish”.
By consulting so far and wide, Allah had elicited and got covenant from every creature. Those among them, that declined responsibility cannot and will not be asked to account for the occurrences therein. Accountability of the world solely rests on man’s shoulder according to the covenant he reached voluntarily with Allah.
Covenant with Allah is the most fundamental law of existence. It is not one sided. As man has responsibilities to bear so does Allah has obligations to fulfil. It is from the covenant with Allah that all other covenants in the life of man, including those of marriage, trust and confidentiality, are derived. That covenant is what others call oath.
Oath of office
In Islam, oath, whether private or public, does not necessarily require Muslims to carry the Qur’an in one’s hand as done in Nigeria particularly at this time when oath of office has become a meaningless symbol. No oath is ever made without Allah being a witness to it. Besides, He has assigned two Angels (Raqib and ‘Atid) to every human being as secret police officers. The duty of these Angels is to record all utterances and secret actions of each person to whom they are assigned. The one records good deeds, the other records evil deeds. Their recordings are both in video and audio forms.
This fact is contained in Q.50: 16 where Allah states that: “We surely created man and ‘We’ know the promptings of his mind and are closer to him than his jugular vein. We assign two guardians to watch him, one on his right and the other on his left. No utterance (from him) or action shall escape the records of these vigilant guardians….”
It is from the functions of these invisible police that researchers came about the idea of video, audio and other technological devices used especially for espionage.
Rare opportunity
Legislating is a rare opportunity to serve one’s nation meritoriously. But most of your predecessors turned that opportunity into one of self-enrichment as well as that of securing the future of your own children at the expense of the lives of other children. All these are done at the expense of the wretched people around them whose role in democracy was relegated to voting once in four years. They forgot that wealth is Allah’s endowment which cannot be inherited except by Allah’s will.
My dear honourable legislators; search your conscience and fear God. Remember that some people had legislated for this country in the past. Some usurped the roles of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary together, in the name of military rule, made possible by coup d’état. Where are they today?
Legislation, like governance, has its tenure. Today, four years may look endless, but for the wise, it is not more than a flash of lightening which only a fool may want to rely upon while walking his way through the darkness of the night.
Peculiar factor
You are in the legislative houses to make laws for today’s generation and that of tomorrow. Ordinarily, that duty should be on part time and not full time basis in a serious country where patriotism holds sway. But since everything in Nigeria has a peculiar factor, it has become a rule that those who are legislating for us must take the lion’s share of our national cake even through the budget. That is why some of your predecessors randomly roared to the total embarrassment of the country that the President or the Governor must be impeached.
Such impeachment became a serious business only when their salaries, allowances or social welfare were not provided as at when due or at the expected volume. It did not matter to them whether or not the entire workforce in Nigeria remained unpaid for years or all the Universities in the country closed down completely and permanently. And in all these charades, religion had no role to play an indication that politics is indifferent to God’s ordinances in Nigeria.
Conscience, though invisible, has a mirror which only a few people know of. That mirror is shame. A person without shame is a person without conscience. And that is the main distinction between a genuine Muslim and a nominal one. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) admonished thus in respect of shame: “once you are bereft of shame, you can go ahead to do whatever you like”. This means that without shame you are such a nonentity that can even choose to strip naked in the market place. That was some of your predecessors did while in office.
Service to humanity
Honourable legislators, let it be kept permanently in your hearts that the only thing which keeps people alive in history even long after their demise is service to humanity. Prophets Isa (Jesus), and Muhammad (SAW), had neither bank accounts nor estates to bequeath to anybody. Their heritage is more than any material wealth for the entire world today. That heritage is service to humanity. What is your own planned heritage if only for posterity? That is a big question which only people with conscience can answer. The rest is left to you. While wishing you a memorable era in Nigeria’s democracy, I pray Allah to guide you aright that you may not end up like your predecessors. Amin
